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Preflight reports "document contains an embedded file entry" on every PDF during PDF/A conversion (no visible attachment)

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It keeps giving me the error message saying the document contains an embedded file entry. when the document does not contain an embedded file. It's doing this to every document I try to put through Preflight.

Preflight pdf/A-2b keeps giving me an error message that the document contains an embedded file entry. In the summary at the bottom it says there is no embedded file. Why is this happening all of a sudden to every document I try to put through preflight?

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M

Marina3484592614kd

Participant

Is there any news on the fix? Ist there an estimate when the fix is available in the public build to install?

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PriyankaVishwakarma

Community Manager

Hi All@Marina3484592614kd, @kind_motivation6f32, @Colorful_uniqueness3376, @affectionate_society4946, @TCH MD, @sharp_thinkinga420, 

Thank you for reaching out, and we appreciate your patience. The issue where Preflight incorrectly reports that the document contains an embedded file entry has been resolved in the latest Acrobat update.

26.003.22075 Planned update, Nov 02, 2026 — Acrobat-Acrobat Reader Release Notes

Once done please restart the device and check if the issue persist.

Let us know how it goes, and reach out if you need any further assistance.

Regards,

^PV

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A

Andres David5EE7

Participant

Hi @PriyankaVishwakarma,

I’m dealing witht the same problem and now installed the update 26.003.22075 (including restarting the device twice, checking the update and repairing my installation just to be sure). Sadly, the problem still remains with the different documents I tested. Now Acrobat sometimes even crashes during the conversion process of certain documents (I sent the report referencing this post in the comment). What still works is saving the document via Save as PDF/A, but not with Preflight.

I will test it more extensively tomorrow.

Best regards,
Andres

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K

kind_motivation6f32

Participant

Has this been solved? I keep getting the same EF error for every file I put in this past week, and I’m in need of a solution.

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A

AnkitVerma

Community Manager

Hi @kind_motivation6f32,

The product team is still working on the issue and validating the fix internally. We appreciate your patience and will update this thread as soon as the fix is available in the public build.

Regards,
^AV

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A

affectionate_society4946

Participant

Any updates on this? I work in the pharmaceutical industry and this is required for many individuals.

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Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

@affectionate_society4946 I hope you are doing well.

The product team is still working on isolating the issue, and we will update here once the fix is available.

Thanks for your cooperation on this.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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T

TCH MD

Participant

Any updates on this? It’s been almost a month and it’s a serieus problem which effects my work for my clients. This issue means I am no longer in compliance with the agreements I have with my clients.

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B

Bettina Knell

Participant

Same issue here on macOS 26.6.2 with Acrobat Pro 26.002.21931 and InDesign 21.5. Every PDF fails, including a fresh one-line test file.

I looked into the file structure, and I believe I found the cause: Acrobat itself embeds a C2PA Content Credentials manifest during the PDF/A conversion.

- Before conversion, the PDF contains no embedded files at all.

- After running "Convert to PDF/A-2b", the catalog has an /AF array with file specifications named like "Acro00000B7D", with /AFRelationship /C2PA_Manifest.

- The embedded stream is a C2PA manifest (JUMBF), signed by "Adobe Acrobat 26.2.21931", but labelled as application/pdf.

- This is the "embedded file which is not a PDF" that Preflight complains about. The conversion then falls back to "Convert page content to image", so the text gets rasterized and the file is still not compliant.

So the problem does not come from the source PDFs, third-party plug-ins or job options. It is Acrobat's own Content Credentials feature conflicting with PDF/A-1/2/4, which do not allow this kind of embedded file.

Hopefully this helps the product team narrow it down. A setting to disable Content Credentials for PDF/A output would already solve it.

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Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Thanks for the details @Bettina Knell

This is helpful, and I will share it with the product team as additional information for the investigation.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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K

kind_motivation6f32

Participant

Has there been any updates on this? I keep getting the same EF error for every file I try to convert to PDF/A.
Thanks.

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A

affectionate_society4946

Participant

s there any resolution to this? Could we get an installer for 21901? This was the last stable version we had. Thanks!

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Meenakshi Negi

Community Manager

Hi affectionate_society4946,

Thank you for reaching out, and sorry for the trouble caused.

This issue has already been reported to the team. You can refer to the following page for the installer of 26.002.21901: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNotesDC/index.html.

Thanks,

Meenakshi

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M

Mark25045282vuw1

Participating Frequently

I'm experiencing the same issue. InDesign files that we've previously exported to PDF and converted to PDF/A are now showing this error when using the Pre-flight tool.

We are using InDesign 21.5.1 and Acrobat 2026.002.21931.

The PDFs do not contain any visible attachments, and files that have successfully converted to PDF/A in the past are now reporting:

"PDF contains EF (embedded file) entry."

As a workaround, we were able to successfully convert the same PDFs to PDF/A using Acrobat's Save As PDF/A function. This suggests the PDFs themselves may not contain genuine embedded files, and that the issue may be related to the current Preflight validation/conversion process.

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Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Thanks for sharing the details @Mark25045282vuw1

Sorry for the trouble. We have raised this with the product team and have shared the above information.

We’ll update the thread as soon as the issue is resolved. Thanks for your cooperation on this.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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M

Mark25045282vuw1

Participating Frequently

Thanks, just as some follow up - I’ve tried saving an optimised PDF, with remove attachments checked. Also, the pre-flight panel tools to discard attachments. I even tried creating a new simple A4 blank document and that failed the check.

As a further check, I took a PDF-A file we saved last year, clicked the ‘enable editing’ button in the blue PDF-A notice, and it failed with the same error.

If there a way to step back a version to last year’s version? This is possible to do with InDesign or Photoshop, in the Adobe CC app.

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C

Colorful_uniqueness3376Author

Participating Frequently

I have had these plug-ins forever and I can’t do my job without them. The PDF/A checkmark is locked so I can’t stop the embedded file discovery or change it. IT has to do it. This started to happen when Microsoft made an update to my computer. This is not the first time they have done so and something weird starting happening with my Adobe. Thanks for your help anyway.

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Anand Sri Bhattacharya

Community Manager

Hello @Colorful_uniqueness3376

We have reported this issue to the product team as a bug for further investigation. The team is working to isolate the issue and develop a fix. We’ll update here once the fix is available.

Thanks for your cooperation on this.

Regards,

Anand Sri.

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D

DFWTechGuy

Participating Frequently

If this is happening with every PDF, even newly created/simple PDFs, I wouldn't assume the files all have hidden attachments.

First check Preflight > Options > Browse Internal PDF Structure and look for an actual embedded file entry. Adobe provides this specifically for investigating Preflight mismatches.

There also appears to be a recent Adobe Community report with the same "embedded file entry" error happening across every document, so this may be related to the current Acrobat/Preflight version rather than the PDFs themselves.

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